The Price You Pay
by Hinn-Raven
Summary: [RvB Angst War] They needed a body for Agent Texas, and only the best will do.


**A/N: Another old Angst War prompt!** **goodluckdetective requested: Church was given Jimmy's body. So who was Tex given?** **Well I certainly had fun with this one. Hope you guys do too!**

* * *

"And you're sure?" The Director asked, looking at the screen.

The Director was a cold man. His bright green eyes were devoid of warmth, even on the rare occasion that they were visible behind the reflective lenses of his glasses.

"Yes sir," the head scientist said. "Forty-nine Freelancers were tested. Only one fits the parameters that you set down."

"Sir," Price said. "We could always expand the candidate pool if need be. The Beta AI—"

"Needs a host, Counselor," the Director said. His face might as well have been carved out of stone. "We have a very narrow window. We cannot afford to waste any time. We have our host body. We shall proceed as planned."

"Very well," Price inclined his head. "I shall go… make the necessary arrangements."

"And I'll prepare the surgery," the scientist said. They both left the room, leaving the Director alone with his thoughts.

He stared at the screen. The words were nonsense to him, blurring together. All that stood out was the photograph of a young woman with bright red hair and green eyes that were bright and vivid, even though her mouth was set in a neutral expression.

"FILSS," he said, dismissing the dossier with a wave of his hand. "Have Agent Carolina come to my office, will you?"

"Certainly, Director!' The AI said. FILSS didn't understand what was going to happen—the files about these processes were deliberately left off the servers, to avoid the potential for hacking. The Director wasn't worried about FILSS knowing what they were planning. A Dummy AI wouldn't tell anyone, after all.

(The Director was a very smart man. He also rarely did understand the things he created.)

Minutes passed. The Director waited.

Finally, the door swung open. "You wanted to see me, sir?"

Once, she would have called him father. She'd stopped using that name for him a long time ago. "Sir," was as close as she got, these days.

"Agent Carolina, come in," he said, pretending to look up from his monitor, as if he hadn't been waiting in agonizing silence for her arrival.

She stood at parade rest in front of the desk. She was wearing full armor, except for her helmet, which was tucked under her arm.

The Director stood up. He wasn't as tall as Carolina; she took after her mother in terms of height.

"Agent Carolina," he said, looking her right in the eye. Her shoulders managed to straighten even further under his gaze. "I have a mission for you. It is _highly_ classified, and very dangerous."

"Who else will be on the team, sir?" She asked, professional as ever. There was a reason their relationship was one of the few well-kept secrets on the ship.

"No one, Agent Carolina," the Director said. "This will be a solo mission, I am afraid." He gave her a look that was almost gentle, almost kind, almost a smile. "I can trust no one else but you for this."

The professional mask faltered for a moment, joy flaring up in her eyes before she tampered it down. "I won't let you down, sir," she said, saluting.

"I know you won't, Agent Carolina," the Director said. "Report to the medical bay. You will need to be checked over before you leave."

"Right away," Carolina said with a brisk nod, saluting again before turning around and leaving.

The Director watched her leave, before sinking down into his chair slowly. He opened the drawer, and pulled out a faded photograph of a woman with blonde hair and a beautiful smile.

"Soon," he told her. "Soon."

He didn't go to the medical bay for the implantation procedure. He did not listen to Agent Carolina's screams as they held her down to the table and pressed a chip into her brain.

"Seal her helmet shut," he said to the armor technician. "I don't want to risk anyone recognizing her."

"Yes sir," the woman saluted, and went back to work fitting the unconscious body with jet-black armor. The aqua pieces lay scattered on the ground, thrown off haphazardly. The Director bent over, and picked up the helmet.

He handed it to another technician. "You know what to do," he ordered. "No one can know."

"Sir!" The man saluted, and began to gather up the pieces of armor.

The next day the Director would tell the other Freelancers that Agent Carolina was killed in battle. They had a funeral.

Three days later, Agent Texas was introduced. Underneath the helmet she couldn't take off, her hair was dyed blonde, but her eyes were as green as ever.

She cracked her knuckles as she looked at Maine, Wyoming and York. "Who's first?"

* * *

"I know who you are," the CT on the screen said. "You don't know it, but your face. It's all in your face. _Look at it,_ Texas. You'll understand, then."

Tex ripped the seals off her helmet. She hadn't realized they were fused shut before. She'd never thought anything of it.

But she stared in the mirror and she felt a scream of horror beginning to build in her chest. She knew that face. York had a picture of a woman in red hair with green eyes, wearing a teal dress. Carolina, he had called her. The dead Freelancer leader.

Carefully, Texas pushed back her hair—blonde, like she knew, in her gut, it had always been.

But the roots were red. A blinding, brilliant red that she recognized from the photographs.

And her eyes… they were the same green as the Director's.

Texas thought about the files that CT had left for her. About the biography of Allison, and she made the connection at once.

"You bastard," she whispered, numbness sinking into her bones, only they weren't her bones, were they? They were Carolina's. And Carolina wasn't feeling anything.

She jammed her helmet back on her head, her thoughts racing in a hundred directions at once. She was going to stop this. Somehow. She'd figure it out.

She grabbed York and shoved him into the nearest abandoned room she could find. "I need your help," she said.

"Tex?" He stared at her. "What's wrong?"

She reached up and pulled off her helmet. "I think something terrible has happened," she said, and York froze at the sight of her face.

"Carolina?" He whispered, like the name was almost too painful to say.

"I don't think so," Tex said, the words tasting like poison on her tongue. "I think I'm what they turned her _into_."

They watched CT's files together, including one that Texas hadn't noticed before, of Carolina's surgery.

Her screams were loud and they echoed in Tex's mind, causing her to double over in pain, clutching the sides of her head, remembering.

York threw up in the corner, shoulders shaking. "We can't let them get away with this," he whispered, looking at her with his one good eye, even though it nauseated him to look at her, to see what they'd done. "They… they…"

"I know," she said, bitter and angry and sorrowful for a woman she'd never gotten the chance to know. Then she spat out. "She was his _daughter_."

York bowed his head. He had known. Another one of Carolina's secrets he had held tightly to his chest, carrying them even though she was dead and buried, or so he had thought. "Why would he do this?" He whispered, more to the universe at large than to Tex or even Delta, who was also reeling at the revelation, muttering the name _Allison_ to himself, as though it held the answers to everything in the entire universe. "The AI, Carolina, you… what does he gain?"

"He thinks he's bringing her back," Tex said, running her hands through her hair. It was longer than Carolina would ever have let it grow, dyed so carefully blonde that it was nearly impossible to tell it wasn't natural. "He thinks he's _saving her_."

York laughed hysterically, still kneeling on the floor. "And all it cost him was his daughter."

Texas hesitantly reached out, grabbing York's shoulder. "They're dead," she promised him, Omega crackling in the back of her mind gleefully. "All of them."

He looked at her. His brown eye was dark with rage. He got to his feet, and grabbed his helmet.

"Carolina was our friend. Our leader. The others will want to help."

Tex grabbed her own helmet, and stared at the reflection—fury blazing in her eyes, her hair wild, skin pale—for a single moment before putting it back on.

"Let's go," she said. "Freelancer ends. _Now_."


End file.
